Indonesia's AI push gains pace with firms leading Southeast Asia in AI adoption

Indonesia is emerging as Southeast Asia’s most aggressive artificial intelligence adopter, with businesses in the country outpacing regional peers in their willingness to invest in AI transformation and infrastructure.

A regional survey by The Business Times found that 62% of Indonesian companies qualified as “first movers” in AI adoption, ahead of Thailand at 55%, Malaysia at 46% and Singapore at 36%.

The study, “The Business Times Insights: ASEAN Intelligence 2026”, grouped companies into three categories: first movers, pragmatic optimisers and cautious traditionalists. First movers were defined as businesses that feel strong pressure to transform and are proactively investing in multiple AI capabilities.

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Across ASEAN, 45% of respondents fell into the first-mover category, while 42% were classified as pragmatic optimisers and 13% as cautious traditionalists.

Conducted in partnership with Kantar, the survey polled more than 500 business leaders across Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The findings point to Indonesia’s growing confidence in AI adoption at both leadership and operational levels, particularly as companies seek to strengthen competitiveness and digital sovereignty.

Indonesia recorded one of the region’s highest levels of perceived pressure to transform due to AI, automation and sustainability trends, with 70% of respondents indicating “moderate” to “strong” urgency.

While Singapore ranked lower in the first-mover category, experts suggested that the city-state’s more cautious stance reflected a mature understanding of AI governance and compliance requirements.

Indonesia’s AI momentum is also being fuelled by demand for sovereign AI infrastructure and locally trained language models.

One of the country’s most notable initiatives is Sahabat AI, a national AI collaboration involving Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, GoTo Group, NVIDIA and AI Singapore. The initiative focuses on building AI models trained on Indonesian languages and dialects to better reflect local cultural nuances and strengthen digital sovereignty.

The survey also highlighted the growing impact AI could have on workforce transformation. More than half of respondents, or 56%, said they expect major disruptions in operations and manufacturing roles by the end of 2026.

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